The History of Indian Literature c8.85

c8.85

I have already discussed the precautions taken to secure the text of the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, *i.e.*, the question of its authenticity, and I have likewise alluded to the aids to its explanation furnished by the remaining Vedic literature. These latter reduce themselves chiefly to the Nighaṇṭus, and the Nirukta of Yáska.³⁰ Both works, in their turn, found their commentators in course of time. For the Nighaṇṭus, we have the commentary of Devarájayajvan, who belongs to about the fifteenth or sixteenth century. In the introduction he enlarges upon the history of their study, from which they appear to have found only one other complete commentator since Yáska, viz., Skandasvámin. For Yáska's Nirukta a commentary has been handed down to us dating from about the thirteenth century, that of Durga. Both works, moreover, the Nighaṇṭus as well as the Nirukta, exist in two different recensions. These do not materially differ from one another, and chiefly in respect of arrangement only; but the very fact of their existence leads us to suppose that these works were originally transmitted orally rather than in writing. A commentary, properly so called, on the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, has come down to us, but it dates only from the fourteenth century, that of Sáyaṇáchárya.∗ "From the long series of centuries\* between Yáska and Sáyaṇa but scanty remains of an exegetic literature connected with the Ṛik-Saṃhitá are left to us, or, at any rate, have as yet been discovered. Śaṃkara and the Vedántic school turned their attention chiefly to the Upanishads. Nevertheless, a gloss upon a portion at least of the Ṛik-Saṃhitá was drawn up by Ánandatírtha, a pupil of Śaṃkara, of which there is an exposition by Jayatírtha, comprising the second and third *adhyáyas* of the first *ashṭaka*, in the Library of the India House in London.” Sáyaṇa himself, in addition to Durga’s commentary on the Nirukti, only quotes Bhaṭṭa Bháskara Miśra and Bharatasvámin as expositors of the Vedas.³¹ The former wrote a commentary upon the Taitt. Yajus, not the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, in which he refers to Káśakṛitsna, Ekachúrṇi, and Yáska as his predecessors in the work. For Bharatasvámin we have no further data than that his name is also cited by Devarája (on the Nighaṇṭus), who further mentions Bhaṭṭa Bháskara Miśra, Mádhavadeva, Bhavasvámin, Guhadeva, Śrínivása, and Uvaṭṭa. The latter, otherwise called Úaṭa, wrote a commentary on the Saṃhitá of the White Yajus, not the Ṛik-Saṃhitá, as well as commentaries on the two Prátiśákhyas of the Ṛik and the White Yajus.